OPSAREA

Summary

The OPSAREA meeting at IETF 125 focused on the state of the Operations and Management Area, including updates from the GROW and SRv6-Ops working groups, a deep dive into the YANG Doctors review process, and progress on the operational guidelines in draft-ietf-opsawg-rfc5706bis. A significant portion of the session was dedicated to presentations from network operators regarding the challenges and practices of integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs) into network operations (AIOps).

Key Discussion Points

1. State of the OPS Nation

Slides: State of OPS Nation Presenter: Med (Mohamed Boucadair)

Area Updates: Roughly half of the OPS working groups have recently undergone or are undergoing re-chartering to refresh their scopes.
Leadership: Significant leadership updates have occurred across various working groups and directorates, bringing in new contributors.

2. Working Group Highlights

GROW (Global Routing Operations)

Slides: State of OPS Nation (Presentation by Paolo Lucente)

BMP Status: The BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP) remains a primary focus. Recent work includes adding new vantage points (Local-RIB and Adj-RIB-Out) and moving toward a TLV-based extensible format.
Ongoing Work: A YANG model for BMP configuration is in progress. Other active topics include the Peering API for automated ASN interaction and best practices for BGP communities.
Mahesh Jethanandani queried if the BMP YANG model would be used for data export (e.g., via YANG Push). Paolo Lucente clarified it is currently for configuration, though export is a potential future step.

SRv6-Ops

Slides: State of OPS Nation (Presentation by Dhruv Dhody)

Role: Acts as a centralized forum for SRv6 operational matters, which are otherwise distributed across SPRING, 6MAN, V6OPS, PCE, and IDR.
Progress: Two drafts have been adopted: SRv6 Deployment Options and Problem Summary.
Coordination: Alvaro Retana (SPRING Chair) confirmed that close coordination between SRv6-Ops and SPRING is working well to avoid overlap.

3. Zoom on YANGDOCTORS

Slides: Zoom on YANGDOCTORS Presenter: Shufang

Review Process: 56 review requests were completed in the past year. The team consists of 17 experts, though only a subset is currently active.
Standards: Reviews are guided by RFC 7950 and the newly published RFC 9907 (formerly draft-ietf-netmod-rfc8407bis).
Tooling Issues: Thomas Graf noted that the IETF Data Tracker's version of libyang is outdated, causing validation failures for drafts using "YANG Structures." Joe Clarke responded that efforts are underway to update the tracker to libyang 2.x via new Debian packages.
Recruitment: There is a continued need for more active YANG Doctors to distribute the workload.

4. RFC5706bis: Operational Guidelines

Slides: RFC5706bis Presenter: Med (Mohamed Boucadair) Draft: draft-ietf-opsawg-rfc5706bis

Goal: The draft updates guidelines for considering operations and management in IETF specs. It emphasizes early discussion over mandating specific solutions.
The "Escape Clause": If a protocol does not require standardized management/YANG models, the authors must document the rationale rather than simply omitting the section.
Impact: Statistics show an increase in drafts including operational consideration sections (up to 71% in recent IESG telechats).
Shepherding: Because the authors are also chairs of OPSAWG, Alvaro Retana has taken over as the document shepherd.

5. AI and Operations (Operator Presentations)

China Telecom: AI Challenges and Practices

Slides: OPS Challenges and Practices in the AI Era Presenter: Qung

Implementation: Developed a "Network Large Model" (60B tokens) and deployed over 1,000 "AI Agents" (Digital Employees).
IETF Priorities: Qung highlighted the need to standardize "Agent-Ops," specifically focusing on agent identity, discovery, boundaries, and traceability.

China Mobile: Challenges of AIOPS for Carrier IP Networks

Slides: Challenges of AIOPS for Carrier IP Networks Presenter: Fenyang

Semantic Communication: Proposed a shift toward "semantic communication" between devices and controllers to eliminate the long journey of standardizing every telemetry data format.
Discussion: Thomas Graf suggested that current YANG-based schemas and the work in the NMOP (Network Management Operations) working group already address some of these semantic and indexing challenges.

China Unicom: Intelligent Operation and Maintenance

Slides: Intelligent Operation and Maintenance: Practices and Reflections Presenter: Jingzhao

Resilience: Focused on network simulation (Digital Twins) and traffic monitoring (iFIT).
Pain Points: Highlighted the difficulty of end-to-end localization in multi-vendor environments and the mismatch between IP-centric monitoring and actual user/application experience.

6. DNS@IETF Considerations

Slides: DNS@IETF Considerations Presenter: Wes Hardaker (via Med)

Conclusion: Med summarized the successful consultation regarding DNS-related work in the IETF. The consultation period is ending, and a new version of the summary draft will be released shortly.

Decisions and Action Items

Data Tracker Updates: Joe Clarke to coordinate with Robert Sparks and Per Anderson to update libyang in the Data Tracker to support modern YANG extensions.
RFC5706bis: The authors of draft-ietf-opsawg-rfc5706bis will continue addressing mailing list feedback before moving toward Working Group Last Call (WGLC).
DNS Consultation: Med to formally conclude the DNS consultation after the final draft version is posted and begin implementation discussions with the IESG.

Next Steps

AI Coordination: The chairs noted the high interest in AI Agents and Digital Twins and suggested that future presentations should more explicitly call out specific technical requirements for IETF standardization.
Recruitment: Encourage the community to join the YANG Doctors team to alleviate the current review bottleneck.

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